Opinions About Homework: A collection of article summaries from the Marshall Memo,

Kim Marshall, http://www.marshallmemo.com

Robert Marzano and Debra Pickering on Productive Homework

“The Case For and Against Homework” by Robert Marzano and Debra Pickering in Educational
Leadership, March 2007 (Vol. 64, #6, p. 74-79). www.ascd.org

In this helpful article in Educational Leadership, researcher/consultant/writers Robert Marzano

and Debra Pickering trace the ups and downs of homework over the years:

- Early 20th century – It was believed that homework helped build disciplined minds;
- 1940s – There was growing concern that homework interfered with other activities;
- Late 1950s – Sputnik sparked a revival of rigorous homework to counter Soviet gains;
- 1980s – Some theorists said homework was detrimental to students’ mental health
- Current – There is a raging debate on the value of homework, including three recent anti-homework
books.
Marzano and Pickering agree with the critics that inappropriate homework is a waste of
everyone’s time and may even decrease student achievement. They also concede that the research
shows that homework produces quite modest gains in the early elementary grades. But they insist that
plenty of research backs up the value of the right kind of homework. For one thing, they argue, it
extends learning time, which is important given the relatively short amount of time that American
students spend in school compared to other countries. What makes the most sense, they argue, is
implementing policies that will ensure that teachers assign homework that will produce learning gains.

Marzano and Pickering say that the research doesn’t offer very specific guidelines for school
people, but they feel comfortable suggesting the following:

• Assign purposeful homework. For example: introducing new content; practicing a skill or
process that students can do independently but not fluently; elaborating on information addressed in
class; and giving students opportunities to explore topics that interest them.

• Assign homework that’s likely to be completed. This means getting the difficulty and interest
level right so that students can do it independently and with a high level of success. Homework that isn’t
completed has little value.

• Involve parents in appropriate ways. Teachers should send home clear guidelines that tell
parents the ways they can be most helpful. One best practice is having parents act as a sounding board
to help students summarize what they have learned from their homework. Parents should not be
expected to act as teachers or to police their children’s homework completion.

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 • Don’t overdo it. The amount of homework should be appropriate to students’ ages and allow
time for other home activities. One rule of thumb is that total homework time should equal the child’s
grade level times 10 (i.e., a sixth grader should be assigned about 60 minutes).

• Follow up with students. Homework should be checked and students should get prompt
feedback and, if necessary, remediation.

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The Skinny on Homework

“Does Homework Improve Academic Achievement? A Synthesis of Research 1987-2003” by Harris
Cooper, Jorgianne Civey Robinson, and Erika Patall in Review of Educational Research, Spring 2006 (Vol.
76, #1, p. 1-62), no e-link available

In this 62-page article in the spring issue of Review of Educational Research, three Duke
University researchers synthesize the research on homework from 1987 to 2003. Noting that all studies
they examined had design flaws, the authors nevertheless found credible evidence that homework has a
positive influence on student achievement in the middle- and high-school grades (50 correlations were
positive and 19 were negative). The evidence on the impact of homework in the elementary grades is
very sparse and firm conclusions can’t be drawn. As for non-academic benefits of homework, the
researchers concluded that “most have never been put to empirical test.”
Beyond these not-very-earth-shattering conclusions, the authors have a number of interesting
observations about homework:
Since not all teachers assign homework and not all students complete the homework they are
assigned, the impact of homework is very hard to pin down.
Some studies suggest that the positive effects of homework on high-school achievement kick in
when students do at least an hour a night. But the researchers note that it’s hard to interpret
data on the correlation between time spent on homework and academic achievement, since
students who are struggling academically may spend a great deal of time on their homework –
or none at all.
Homework is an on-going source of friction between home and school, with parents
complaining about it being too short or too long, too hard or too easy.
Teachers give homework for a variety of purposes, including: (a) to have students practice or
review material presented in class; (b) to establish communication between parent and child; (c)
to fulfill directives from the principal or school district; and (d) to punish students.
Studies have theorized about a number of potentially positive effects of homework, including:
- Immediate achievement and learning, including better retention of factual knowledge,
increased understanding, better critical thinking, concept formation, and information
processing, and curriculum enrichment;

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 - Long-term academic benefits, including more learning during leisure time, improved
attitude toward school, and better study habits and skills
- Nonacademic benefits, including great self-direction, greater self-discipline, better time
management, more inquisitiveness, and more independent problem-solving;
- Parent and family benefits, including greater parental appreciation of and involvement in
schooling, parental demonstrations of interest in children’s academic progress, and
student awareness of the connection between home and school.

Studies have also postulated some potentially negative effects of homework, which can operate
in the same homes as the positives:
- Student satiation, including loss of interest in academic material and physical and
emotional fatigue;
- Denial of access to leisure time and community activities;
- Parental interference, including pressure to complete homework and perform well and
confusion of instructional techniques;
- Cheating, including copying from other students and help beyond tutoring;
- Increased differences between high and low achievers.

This last point is interesting: critics of homework argue homework actually widens the
achievement gap, since more economically-advantaged students tend to have greater parental
support and assistance, quieter places to study, and greater resources, including access to
computers and the Internet.

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Effective Ways to Get Students to Do Their Homework

“If They’d Only Do Their Work” by Linda Darling-Hammond and Olivia Ifill-Lynch in Educational
Leadership, Feb. 2006 (Vol. 63, #5, p. 8-13). www.ascd.org

In this lead article in the February Educational Leadership, Stanford professors Linda Darling-
Hammond and Olivia Ifill-Lynch hear the plaintive cry of many teachers – “If I could only get them to do
their work!” – and list the reasons so many students don’t complete homework: not knowing how to do
the assignments; jobs, babysitting, and other family responsibilities; undeveloped time management
and planning skills; self-protection (“Don’t care about the stupid work”); and general despair and lack of
motivation. Teachers usually give failing grades to students who don’t turn in homework to “teach them
a lesson,” but this strategy rarely works; in fact, it may confirm students’ feeling that they can’t be
successful and result in even less homework being turned in.
“A more difficult but effective approach,” say Darling-Hammond and Ifill-Lynch, “is to create a
strong academic culture that changes students’ beliefs and behaviors, convincing them to engage in
their schoolwork.” Here are some of the strategies successful schools use:

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 • Assign work that is worthy of effort. Before teachers give out a homework assignment, they
should ask themselves, Does it make sense? Is it necessary? Is it useful? Is it authentic and engaging?
Students are most likely to do homework when it is part of a meaningful curriculum unit and will
actually be used in class the next day.
• Make the work doable. “Even if the work is engaging,” say Darling-Hammond and Ifill-Lynch,
“students won’t do it if they don’t know how.” Teachers should be sure the directions are clear and
students can complete the assignment without help. “Unless homework is a clear continuation of well-
taught classwork,” they write, “it can actually exacerbate inequalities in learning instead of closing the
gap. Students whose parents understand the homework and can help them with it at home have a
major advantage over students whose parents are unable or unavailable to help.” One way for teachers
to monitor the difficulty level of homework is to allow students to get started on their assignments in
class. Another is to discuss homework assignments with other teachers and continuously search for
assignments that have the highest return rate.
• Find out what students need. “Even when students have engaging work that they can do,” say
Darling-Hammond and Ifill-Lynch, “they have to be motivated and organized to do it.” They recommend
that teachers reach out to students who are having difficulty and brainstorm strategies that work for
them. Teachers should ask themselves, How does this student learn? What motivates him or her? What
are relevant concerns, attitudes, aspirations, and beliefs? The goal is for the process to be “transparent,
concrete, manageable, and as simple as possible.” One school conducted a “homework audit” and
discovered that the problem was that many students had jobs after school. Teachers decided to devise
job-embedded homework assignments.
• Create space and time for homework. Some teachers invite students to do homework during
their preparation periods or lunch breaks. Some schools set up a structured after-school homework time
or “success classes” during the school day (in one school, the success classes were supervised by the
principal, showing his commitment to the goal). Some schools mark homework assignments
“incomplete” until they are handed in and extend deadlines into the next marking period, vacations, or
even the summer. The bottom line, says New York City middle-school principal Jacqueline Ancess: “The
school needs to make it harder not to do the work than to do it!”
• Make work public. “Struggling learners benefit when learning goals and the desired quality of
learning products are public and explicit,” say Darling-Hammond and Ifill-Lynch. One school made it a
policy for all teachers to post the following items in their classrooms:
- The content that the class was currently studying;
- Where the class was in that study;
- A list of products that students were required to create to demonstrate learning;
- The completed student work products.
It’s also helpful for teachers to post or make available exemplars of proficient student work on similar
projects so students have a clear picture of what is expected. All this helps students to know exactly
where they stand with their work and facilitates conversations with students who are falling behind.

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 • Encourage collaboration. This goes for collaboration among students (for example, 9th graders
working with 12th graders) and among teachers. “Schools that are organized as supportive learning
communities with opportunities for collegial problem solving can better support their students in
developing the practices and habits essential to doing schoolwork,” conclude Darling-Hammond and Ifill-
Lynch.

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Homework That Gets Done and Contributes to Learning

“Five Steps to More Effective Homework” by Cathy Vatterott in Middle Ground, August 2010 (Vol. 14,
#1, p. 29-31), no e-link available; the author is at vatterott@umsl.edu

“Homework that students cannot do without help is not good homework and is de-motivating.
Homework should make students feel smarter, not dumber.” - Cathy Vatterott

In this Middle Ground article, University of Missouri/St. Louis professor Cathy Vatterott offers
suggestions for increasing the homework completion rate and getting a bigger instructional bang for the
buck:
• Provide a clear academic purpose – Homework shouldn’t present new knowledge; rather, it
should enhance classroom learning by checking for understanding, practicing a skill learned in class,
reviewing for a test or quiz, or previewing something students will learn soon.
• Make it do-able – “Homework that students cannot do without help is not good homework
and is demotivating,” says Vatterott. “Homework should make students feel smarter, not dumber.”
• Personalize – Students should have choices and opportunities to gain ownership of the
assignment.
• Make it interesting – Students are much more likely to complete homework when it is clear,
interesting, and fun. “Middle grades students routinely complain about spaces too small to write in or
too much information on a page,” says Vatterott. Some examples of good assignments:
- Write an op-ed piece defending a war, a theory, a method, a character, or an author.
- Create a lesson plan to teach the water cycle to students in a lower grade.
- Write a story or newspaper article showing you know the meaning of the 15 vocabulary words
of the week.
• Differentiate – “One-size-fits-all homework does not fit all,” says Vatterott. Homework can be
differentiated by:
- Time – A 20-minute assignment for one student can take another student 60 minutes. One
solution is to make an assignment time-based rather than task-based, for example, “Do as
many problems as you can in 20 minutes, draw a line, and work longer if you’d like.”
- Difficulty – For example, fewer questions, or circling rather than writing answers. Many
adaptations that teachers use for ELL or special-education students could benefit others as
well.

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 - Scaffolding – Providing graphic organizers, word banks, multiplication tables, partially-
completed math problems, and copies of class notes can make homework more do-able.
- Interest/learning style – For example, letting students choose which book to read or which
aspect of a country’s culture to research, or let students choose how they will demonstrate
what they have learned – a report, poster, or video.
• Decriminalize grading – “Homework should not cause students to fail,” says Vatterott. “If
homework carries too much weight in determining students’ grades, students may fail even though they
have demonstrated mastery on tests and in-class assignments.” Holding students accountable for
homework should mean insisting that they finish rather than giving them a zero. Some possible policies:
- Have a Zeros Aren’t Possible policy – all work must be completed.
- Use homework to check for understanding and give feedback.
- Don’t kill motivation or course grades by being too punitive.
- If possible, don’t give grades at all; give credit for completion only, not correctness or
accuracy.
- Count homework 10 percent or less of final grades.
- Be somewhat lenient on lateness; allow re-dos or give “incomplete” grades.
Vatterott suggests ways of checking homework every day: (a) A quick visual check (these got it, these
didn’t) with immediate follow-up instruction for the students who didn’t;
(b) Student self-check (got it, not sure, didn’t get it) with follow-up instruction for the latter two groups;
and (c) Peer review – students meet in groups, compare answers, ask each other questions, and report
back to the teacher.
• Solve problems – When students don’t complete homework, figure out why. Reasons might
include academic, organizational, motivational, situational (too many distractions at home, too many
after-school activities), or personal (depression, anxiety, family issues). Solutions might include:
- Let some students keep a copy of the textbook at home.
- Assign “homework buddies” to work with or call for help.
- Set a maximum amount of time to work on each assignment.
- Prioritize assignments.
- Give all assignments for the next week on Friday, due the following Friday.
- Stagger due dates for each segment of long-term projects.
- Allow parents or students to call the teacher at home if necessary.
- Once a week, have students clean out lockers and reorganize their folders.
- Coordinate core-subject homework assignments and limit the number of tests and projects at
any given point in time.
• Provide support – “Instead of trying to teach kids responsibility, let’s force them to practice
responsibility,” says Vatterott. Some schools have ZAP (Zeroes Aren’t Possible) after-school programs
four days a week, with mandatory early intervention for students who aren’t turning in homework on a
regular basis. Other schools use advisory or study hall periods for homework support.

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A Theory About Homework

“Homework Inoculation and the Limits of Research” by Bruce Jackson in Phi Delta Kappan, September
2007 (Vol. 89, #1, p. 55-59), no e-link available

“Over time, students determined to avoid homework discover that they can outlast most teachers in a
battle of wills.” - Bruce Jackson

In this Kappan article, recently retired California teacher Bruce Jackson puts forward an
intriguing hypothesis on why the “good homework habits” that we strive to give students in elementary
school fall apart when they get to high school.
As an urban high-school teacher, Jackson noticed a stubborn resistance among a number of
promising students to doing his geometry homework. Students who started the year with significant
gaps in their math education really needed to study and do problem sets every night. If they did that, it
was entirely possible for them to overcome their math deficits and pass. But very few did their
homework, and as a direct result, most of them failed, even though they said they wanted to go to
college. “Why would so many students willingly waste a year sitting through geometry class and earn
zero credits toward graduation?” Jackson wondered. All they had to do was spend 40-50 minutes a day
at home – and there was free tutoring available at lunch and after school. What were they thinking?
When asked directly, Jackson says, these students “offer a charming variety of excuses,
evasions, defensive maneuvers, mea culpas, and doleful expressions, many well practiced from prior
confrontations with parents or counselors. Almost all say that to succeed they would need to start doing
all their homework. They further insist that they want to be successful.” But then they didn’t follow
through. Jackson began to believe that this behavior pattern originated in elementary schools and
operated in ways that students and adults didn’t fully grasp. Here’s his theory:
• In elementary school, homework is usually assigned without a strong belief that it improves
achievement (research confirms that K-5 homework has little impact), but with the goal of instilling
“good work habits” and responsibility. School boards, superintendents, and principals insist on
homework and many parents expect it, so elementary schools are firmly in this pattern. The problem,
says Jackson, is that doing homework becomes a sign of childhood dependency and submission to adult
authority. “Good boys and girls obediently do their homework; rebellious boys and girls do not. Parents
and schools with the necessary will power and resources can ensure that their third-graders will do their
homework. Most 8- and 9-year olds, after all, will submit to sufficiently adamant adults, at least for a
while. But homework isn’t intrinsically pleasurable, and the seeds of future rebellion are sown. Along
with the other indignities of childhood, homework has become something to be outgrown. Like broccoli
or lima beans, it can be endured until one gains enough size, strength, and mental agility to create
persuasive cover stories for what happened to it.”

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 • In middle school, the rebellion against homework picks up steam, especially among boys
getting homework assignments from female teachers. “Young males in American society are under
intense social pressure to show rebellious, risk-taking behavior,” writes Jackson, “and for boys with few
positive male role models, the need to establish masculine credentials by rejecting ‘feminizing’
submission to authority is particularly strong.” The peer group begins to see doing homework as a
liability: “only nerds, grinds, and other social ‘losers’ maintain such ‘goody-goody’ habits,” says Jackson.
“Even moderate zeal around homework risks affecting contact with friends and limiting access to the
currency of social interchange: ‘what’s hot’ on the Web and in film, TV, video games, music, gossip, and
consumer goods.” When homework compliance starts to fall off, teachers are often so overwhelmed
with the number of students that they don’t follow up. Teachers may keep students who don’t do
homework after school, but this punishes teachers as much as it does students, and many lose the will
to continue. “Over time,” says Jackson, “students determined to avoid homework discover that they can
outlast most teachers in a battle of wills.”
• As fewer and fewer students do homework, teachers are caught in a self-reinforcing cycle. If
lessons depend on students doing homework, and few students are doing it, the lessons will flop. So
teachers tend to assign non-essential homework – busywork or “skills review”. Here’s the cycle:
 Fewer students doing homework
 Less classwork based on homework
 Less homework that matters
 Even less reason for students to do homework.

“Once this powerful feedback loop is in place,” says Jackson, “individual efforts to counter it are often
self-defeating. Students still completing homework become more isolated and less able to justify their
actions to their friends or themselves. Teachers trying to emphasize homework face a double load: one
lesson plan for those who have done the assignment plus a separate one to keep the rest occupied and
out of trouble. How much easier to give up and go with lesson plans that minimize the importance of
homework.”
• In high school, except for a small number of seriously college-oriented students, the culture
has internalized the very opposite of what we thought we were teaching. “‘Good homework habits’ are
now an unhappy memory from early childhood dependency,” writes Jackson. “Obedience to parents
and teachers is problematic and rarely practiced outside their immediate presence. Students have
furthermore learned that homework is not really important to passing courses, that it’s mostly make-
work to keep them busy, that nothing serious happens if they don’t do it. Finally, except for those in the
‘brains’ crowd, taking homework seriously has become incompatible with their hoped-for social identity.
For most students, the prevailing norm is to ‘get by without showing off,’ and far too many figure they
can get by without doing much homework.”
• The real tragedy of this, says Jackson, is that in high school, homework really is important! And
it’s a social leveler too, allowing students with weaker academic backgrounds to compete with better-

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prepared peers and make it to college. But the students who need it the most are the least likely to do
it.
So what is to be done? Alfie Kohn and others decry “excessive” homework and advocate
abolishing it in the elementary grades or cutting way back. Jackson concedes that children from well-to-
do families might do fine without homework, given their ready access to books, the Internet,
recreational programs, the arts, and college expectations. “But for families without these class-based
resources,” he says, “how else but through homework can students catch up academically with their
more advantaged peers? Alfie Kohn worries about over-homeworked children ‘missing out on their
childhood.’ Yet students in the low-income areas where I’ve worked spend long hours in homes where
television, video games, or older siblings are the only babysitters, and outside, the streets are unsafe. If
this childhood is to be ‘protected’ from the intrusion of homework, what chance do these students have
of matching their middle-class peers in academic proficiency?”
Jackson thinks he has the solution: making elementary homework meaningful and enjoyable.
Here are some components:
- A well-designed home reading program that gets students hooked on independent reading,
builds a self-sustaining reading habit that doesn’t depend on obedience, tokens, or rewards, and
cuts down on TV viewing and video game use.
- Giving homework assignments that provide recognition and an academic payoff in school and
help internalize the idea that individual effort outside school pays off. “No one seriously
contends that virtuoso performances in music or sports are achieved without extensive
practice,” says Jackson. “Why should academic performances be different?”
- Assigning projects that don’t “feel” like homework and motivate students to produce high-
quality products. Such long-term work, says Jackson, “may do far more for building an academic
identity than any number of stars, happy faces, or letter grades.”
“Despite the ambiguities of research,” he writes, “carefully planned homework can be a great equalizer
at the elementary level” and can serve as the foundation for a different and far more productive
homework dynamic in middle and high schools.
Jackson concludes with a call for better research – and says the best insights for improving
homework may come from action research by middle- and high-school teachers. He urges them to get
to know their students and parents, loop with their students for as many years as possible, seek to
understand the conditions under which homework gets done, and strive to make the homework they
assign “truly doable, worth doing, and in some way rewarding to the students themselves.”
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Less is More? Four Ideas for American Schools
“Learning from the World: Achieving More By Doing Less” by Lawrence Baines in Phi Delta Kappan,
October 2007 (Vol. 89, #2, p. 98-100), no e-link available

In this provocative Kappan article, University of Toledo professor Lawrence Baines argues that
American schools won’t get better by lengthening the school year, assigning more homework, hooking

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up more computers, and giving more tests. Countries that are outscoring us on international tests have
not taken this approach, indicating that other factors are at work in getting higher student achievement:

• Homework – Secondary-school math teachers in the U.S. assign an average 140 minutes of homework
a week, compared to 120 minutes a week in Korea. Despite this, Korean students outscore U.S. students,
584 to 502, on the TIMSS. The reason, says Baines, is that American teachers tend to assign textbook
homework in which students are neither interested nor engaged.

“In examining homework policies around the world,” he writes, “researchers have concluded, ‘The
relationships between national patterns of homework and national achievement suggests that… more
homework may actually undermine national achievement.’ Many bleary-eyed American students would
wholeheartedly agree.” - Lawrence Baines

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Findings from a New Poll on Homework

“Survey on Homework Reveals Acceptance, Despite Some Gripes” by Debra Viadero in Education Week,
Feb. 20, 2008 (Vol. 27, # 24, p. 10)
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2008/02/20/24homework_ep.h27.html. The survey is available at
http://www.edweek.org/links

A 2007 survey on homework by Harris Interactive (for the MetLife Insurance Company) was
released two weeks ago and shed some light on the status of this much-debated practice: 80 percent of
teachers and parents and 70 percent of students said that homework is important or very important –
and support was even stronger among African-American and Hispanic parents, who overwhelmingly
believe that homework helps children learn more and reach their goals after high school. The survey
also found:
- 75 percent of students said they do at least 30 minutes of homework each weekday.
- 45 percent of students said they do an hour or more.
- 90 percent of students said getting homework done caused them anxiety, despite the fact that
most students said they had enough time.
- 25 percent of secondary-school students said their homework assignments were mostly
busywork (this was down from 75 percent in a 2002 survey).
- By contrast, only 16 percent of teachers rated homework quality as poor.
- Teachers said they spend an average of 8½ hours a week preparing and grading homework.
- Veteran teachers tended to be more supportive of homework than new teachers.
- Students who had the lowest opinion of homework and spent the least time on it were generally
those who earned Cs and below, didn’t have college plans, and rated their schools as fair or
poor.
- Similarly, parents who were the most critical of homework tended to be those who were the
most alienated from their children’s schools, the most critical of how frequently teachers were
in touch with them, and the amount of guidance their children received on homework.

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“So, if the kids who really need the practice aren’t attempting the homework and are getting little
support at home, and the ones who do complete it are often getting too much support, is homework
working for anybody?” - Lisa Mangione

Homework: Issues of Fairness and Effectiveness

“Is Homework Working?” by Lisa Mangione in Phi Delta Kappan, April 2008 (Vol. 89, #8, p. 614-615), no
e-link available

In this Kappan article, Lisa Mangione, an Amherst, NY middle-school teacher, wonders about the
efficacy of complex homework assignments that in many cases end up being “outsourced” to parents.
“And what about those students who will not get help with their homework, simply because the adults
at home are unable or unwilling to help?” Mangione asks. Should those students be penalized for
choosing their parents badly?

Mangione remembers her father’s advice when she first started teaching. A veteran educator,
he told her, “Homework should be independent practice.” In other words, it should reinforce what was
already modeled and taught, and students should be able to do it without parental help. And as for
whether it should be graded, he made a sports analogy: homework is like practice that athletes do
before a game, but “It only counts in the game.”

So how can teachers get students to complete their homework without the leverage of grades –
having it count? Mangione suggests that the same logical consequences might apply as in sports: if you
don’t practice, you won’t do well in the game, so you’d better not miss practice!

In schools where homework is graded, there are serious equity issues. Homework is “an entirely
different animal from school to school, class to class, teacher to teacher,” says Mangione, “ranging from
rote memorization of spelling words to long-term projects that encompass an entire unit of study.”
Given these differences, how can grades be fair from class to class? Not to mention the problem of some
students getting lots of help from the “big parental elves” at home while others get none. All this vitiates
the link between homework and students’ real understanding.

The result is a dysfunctional dynamic. “Unfortunately,” says Mangione, “the students who most
need the practice and discipline of self-guided assignments are the ones who just never do them… We
may think that grading homework sends a message that it isn’t optional, but the fact is, the students
who are most at risk will almost always opt out.”

“So,” Mangione asks, “if the kids who really need the practice aren’t attempting the homework
and are getting little support at home, and the ones who do complete it are often getting too much
support, is homework working for anybody?”

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 Not the way many schools are handling it, but Mangione believes it can work – if it’s handled
properly. She concludes by quoting approvingly from the findings of homework expert Harris Cooper of
Duke University:

- The quality of homework assignments is more important than the quantity of time students
spend on them.
- Homework should be a mix of mandatory and voluntary assignments.
- Students should be able to do their homework without parent assistance, except for
creating a good environment in which to do the work.
- Homework should not be graded; mandatory assignments that are not handed in should
result in remediation, not a failing grade.
- Schools and districts should have explicit guidelines for homework, accompanied by teacher
training.

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